Nobody Knows Nothing

March 27, 2020 James Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer Recorded: March 24, 2020 [This introduces the possibility of everything that gold bugs have been praying for. INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT (EDITED) Albert Lu: It’s another day of volatility for investors, as hope for a government stimulus package pushes the Dow Jones Industrial Average back above the 20,000 point mark. But how long will [it] last? Joining me now is the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer and the author of several books, including The Forgotten Depression: 1921: The Crash That Cured Itself. Jim Grant, welcome. It’s a pleasure to have you on and I promised you just now that I will not require you to answer that question but I’m sure we’ll have plenty of things to talk about. How are you? James Grant: I’m fine. Thank you, Albert. AL: Something tells me that the story of 2021 is going to be a little bit different than that of 1921. So, where shall we begin? JG: How about 2020? AL: [laughs] Okay. What are your thoughts on what’s going on [over] the past week or so? JG: Well, it is a light show. I guess the big question is whether Mr. Market has ceded operating control of finance to Uncle Sam in the shape of these quite gob stopping interventions and, in the face of things, it looks as if that were possible. Only September, before the pandemic, the Fed intervened in response to a kind of anomalous, unscripted spike in the so-called repo rate. That’s the rate at … Continue reading →